Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/284

222 of its opponents. This, indeed, was shown byits subsequent behaviour, for whenever a Tit became temporarily detached from its companions it hesitated no longer but forthwith attacked.

There are other species which are no less aggressive than the Warblers—the Chats for example. The Stonechat regards with suspicion almost any bird of its own size, and will even pursue a Tree-Pipit if it approaches too closely. The same is true of the Whinchat, and one would scarcely expect to find this bird attacking Buntings as it sometimes does. A Whinchat that occupied some marshy ground was constantly at war with a pair of Reed-Buntings; their territories were adjacent and in some measure overlapped, and the Whinchat drove away either sex indiscriminately, and was not only always the aggressor but seemed to be master of the situation.

Coming now to kindred forms, those, that is to say, which belong to the same family, we find that, both in intensity and extent, the warfare far exceeds anything that we have thus far considered. So frequent, indeed, are acts of intolerance, and so readily awakened into activity is the pugnacious nature of the bird, that the fighting will almost bear comparison in volume with that which occurs between individuals of the same species. Between the Thrush and the Blackbird there are incessant quarrels early in the year, and the initiative seems to pass from one to the other according to